thing 44: ‘when I have fears that I may cease to be’: getting up early
Up before the sun. Who ever thought I’d be celebrating that?
When I first imagined doing 50 things, watching sunrise was one of them: I had a romantic notion of being somewhere warm enough, and verdant and lovely, preferably with a long view; there would be a flask of tea and a sense of wonder, perhaps with a side of epiphany. But that particular version of (more…)
oyez, oyez, oyez!
This isn’t a thing, but feels like a culmination of an awful lot of things.
It’s a quick post to unveil my new website, which is dedicated to poetry. The new site has come about because an actual press is going to be publishing two actual pamphlets of my poems, one of which will have an actual ISBN number (more…)
thing 43: ‘yourself/my own dog’: the Song of the Silent Child
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.
“In a time then and now/In a place far and near/In a world of which old stories tell/A land cradled in light―/Sun by day, moon by night―/Is held safe under summer’s sweet spell”. This is Summerland, where The Song of the Silent Child is set. The eponymous Silent Child is despised in this land of perpetual happiness, and it isn’t until she meets Old Mother Love, the Crone/wise woman who is dying, that the Child learns who she is: “’You go by (more…)
thing 42: ‘the pale blue dot’: bivvying
Silent, upon a peak in Cumbria.
Or to be more precise: intermittently rustling, upon a peak in Cumbria.
Or to be even more precise: intermittently rustling as I shifted around inside in a bivvy bag on a flattish grassy hillock overlooking Easedale Tarn on a clear early autumn night. In Cumbria. (more…)